What are the treatments for stomach cancer?

  Currently, the treatment of gastric cancer advocates surgery as the center and focus of multidisciplinary comprehensive treatment.  For early-stage gastric cancer, after assessment to exclude the presence of local lymph nodes or distant metastases, reduced surgery, such as gastric wedge resection, pylorus-preserving gastrectomy, local lesion resection (EMR, ESD) under gastroscopy, or minimally invasive laparoscopic surgery can be chosen.  For locally progressive gastric cancer, the patient’s systemic condition should be fully evaluated before surgery. If the local lesion can be resected, surgery can be performed directly, or neoadjuvant chemotherapy can be administered followed by surgery plus postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy. This perioperative combined chemotherapy treatment model has been proven to be beneficial in extending the overall survival time of patients in overseas clinical studies, while the effectiveness in China is still under study; if the local lesion cannot be resected, preoperative chemotherapy can be administered, and the opportunity for surgery can be obtained again after the lesion has regressed.  In our department, D2 radical surgery, including resection of local gastric lesions and clearance of the first and second perigastric lymph nodes, is actively performed as long as the general condition of the patient allows, in strict accordance with the treatment standard, to ensure the adequacy and radicality of the surgery. At present, more than 800 cases of gastric cancer are treated each year, with an overall survival rate of about 50-60% at 5 years, an overall complication rate of less than 5%, and a surgery-related mortality rate of less than 1%, making the overall medical level among the best in Shanghai and even in China. The accumulation of a large number of cases also illustrates the skillfulness and mastery of our surgeons in gastric cancer surgery, and at the same time, such surgery has been proven to be safe and effective.  After surgery, patients should further undergo chemotherapy or radiotherapy to prevent the recurrence of the disease.  For advanced gastric cancer that cannot be resected by surgery or cannot be completely resected, or has distant metastases that cannot be operated on at the time of consultation, palliative systemic treatment is performed. Some advanced patients may have the opportunity to be surgically resected again if their disease is in remission.  After surgical operation, when normal food is eaten and physical condition is recovered (usually about 3-4 weeks after surgery), the decision of chemoradiotherapy will be made according to the stage of the disease. In general, six adjuvant chemotherapy sessions are required after radical resection, and intravenous chemotherapy, oral chemotherapy or combined intravenous and oral chemotherapy can be chosen according to the disease, physical condition and age. The time interval between chemotherapy sessions is 1 week, 2 weeks or 3 weeks depending on the protocol. During chemotherapy, it should be noted that if there is persistent vomiting, diarrhea, little food or other serious discomfort, it is necessary to come to the hospital in time.  Malignant tumors may recur and metastasize after complete resection even in early stage, so regular review is an essential task after surgery. Generally speaking, it is necessary to review once a month during chemotherapy, once every three months after chemotherapy or without chemotherapy, once every six months to once a year after three years, and once a year after five years, including basic items such as chest X-ray, ultrasound, tumor markers, CT, gastroscopy, etc.